The city commenced proceedings to prevent a citizen from bringing any action or complaint against it or from submitting any requests to the city and, in particular, to limit his right of access to information.
An application limiting a citizen's right of access to information had never before been issued by a Québec court.
The citizen repeatedly filed access requests, which paralyzed the city's administration and had improper behaviour towards the employees. As a result, the city, represented by Fasken, asked the Court to declare the citizen a querulous litigant.
The Superior Court found that the citizen was a querulous litigant given that he monopolized the city, the courts and various other bodies with his motions and ordered numerous orders that our courts had never yet issued.
In this decision, the citizen was prohibited from filing any legal action, complaint or access request with the city without having obtained the prior written authorization of a competent authority. He was also prohibited from accessing any municipal facilities. Moreover, he was to discontinue all of his actions against the city before the Commission d'accès à l’information, and the Court cancelled [A1] all access to information requests sent by the citizen to the city.
The citizen was also prohibited from lodging any disciplinary complaints against any lawyers or notaries who were employees of the city, unless authorized in writing by the Syndic of the Barreau du Québec or the Chambre des notaires. The Tribunal also authorized these two bodies to refrain from processing any disciplinary complaints filed by Michel Vachon and further ordered him to comply with and respect such refusal to act on the request.
The Court ordered the citizen to cease communicating with, directly or indirectly, all elected officials and employees of the city, other than by sending an email to a general email address. It is also him prohibited from making threats, insults, editorial comments and defamatory or abusive statements against any elected official, employee, lawyer or notary of the city by any means, including social media.
The Court also required the citizen to cease harassing, annoying, deliberately following or intimidating any elected official, employee, lawyer or notary of the city.
A Fasken team composed of Antoine Aylwin, Aya Barbach and Marilou Simard represented the City in this litigation.
Jurisdiction
- Québec
